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Red Piston in growth mode

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The Windsor Star/ Dave Hall

A Windsor company which develops apps for mobile devices with clients ranging from Lowe’s Canada to Dodge, is now creating games for an upstart game console developer which expects to launch its new products in March.

Red Piston, launched by Andy Kale, Jakub Koter and Ali Al-Aasm, is working on game development for Los Angeles-based Boxer8, which has created Ouya, a console running on an Android operating system and funded by $8.5 million in contributions from Kickstarter.com, a crowd-funding website which has attracted more than a half-million financial backers of game-related technology.

“They came in asking for $900,000 and walked away with more than $8 million,” said Al-Aasm of Ouya’s founders. “It’s an amazing story in game development.”

The console, expected to sell for about $99 US, will feature an Ouya store for applications and games designed exclusively for the console.

Koter said that all initial games will have some type of play-for-free aspect which will make them “extremely accessible to all gamers.”

Connecting with Ouya is just another step in Red Piston’s growth which has enabled it to increase staffing levels to 11 with plans to hire five additional designers, programmers and account representatives, said Kale.

“We’re always looking ahead to see what’s on the horizon and we see Ouya as a great opportunity to get our apps into people’s living rooms as well as onto their phones,” said Kale.

The company also hopes to take advantage of plans by Ford and General Motors to open up their vehicle infotainment systems to outside software developers.

“We’ve let Ford know we’re interested and we’ll do the same with GM so that when they’re ready open up the process, we’ll be ready as well,” said Koter.

Apps from outside developers are expected in some 2014 models from both automakers.